Stress relievers

Here are tips for relieving stress during the holidays, from Bob Levine, of Southfield-based Corporate Wellness Resources LLC:
• Understand that everyone generates their own stress automatically in response to their circumstances.
• Recognize when stress is developing. Notice changes that can include changes in muscle tension, negative thoughts and utterances, upset stomach, headache.
• Once you feel signs of stress coming on, tell yourself everything is OK. Accepting yourself allows you to immediately be free of resistance and stress.
• Be confident you can get through stressful moments every time you experience one.
• Inhale and exhale normally as you have the intention to release stress. Having this intention and taking a breath interrupts the automatic stress reaction and allows you to be confident that you will produce all of the results you really want this holiday season and beyond.

Eat healthy, exercise, get plenty of sleep — and prepare yourself for the challenges that can come with balancing work with the holidays, says Bob Levine, of Southfield-based Corporate Wellness Resources LLC.

Above all, the key to moving beyond surviving to thriving during the holidays is to prepare mentally for the challenges that can come during the busy season, said Levine, vice president of wellness and high-performance strategies with Corporate Wellness.

“The holidays can be stressful because people often feel pressured to spend a lot of money on gifts, sometimes more than they have,” said Levine, the former co-director and holistic health practitioner at the Henry Ford Center for Integrative Wellness in Southfield.

“Then, with all the celebrating, time issues sometimes grip people who may feel that there is not enough time to accomplish everything.”

Since his wife, Charlene, founded Corporate Wellness Resources in June 2010, Levine said the company has been offering a variety of group programs to self-insured corporations.

“Companies are burdened by the high cost of health care and the further adverse impacts of presenteeism and absenteeism resulting from employee ill-health,” Levine said.

“Our goal is to offer programs for relief of chronic pain and stress for employees of self-insured companies. We want to help companies improve employee health by teaching people what they need to do to reduce stress and relieve pain,” he said.

Levine said companies can offer their efficient and cost-effective stress and pain-relieving programs to employees who have a variety of health problems — chronic back pain, neck pain, sleep disturbance, anxiety or fatigue, and binge eating.

Health care workers and providers also are prone to stress and overeating during the holidays, Levine said.

“Many health care workers are taking care of others at their own expense, which hurts their health and other aspects of their lives in the long run,” said Levine, a 2011 Crain’s Health Care Hero.

According to the American Psychological Association, stress affects people in a variety of ways, especially during the holidays.

• 69 percent of people are stressed out by having a lack of time to get everything done